Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui said Thursday the country was "past the point of constitutional crisis" after U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office dropped the case against a man accused of threatening to kill President Donald Trump.
"Why is the government not out of sheer embarrassment and shame seeking to dismiss with prejudice and expunge the record?" Faruqui asked prosecutors on Thursday after they dropped charges against Edward Dana.
Dana was held in jail for a week after the government alleged he broke a light fixture and threatened to kill Trump while drunk.
"We're past the point of constitutional crisis," Faruqui said, according to CBS correspondent Scott MacFarlane. "We're acting like this is all normal."
The judge accused the Justice Department of "just a rush to get stats on Twitter or Truth Social."
"What's to prevent people from just getting rounded up off the streets?" he wondered. "These are people with names and rights!"
The judge said that "people like Mr. Dana are suffering the consequences" as the DOJ was "losing credibility."
"You created this mess," he told prosecutors, accusing Pirro's office of "too many misfires."
"The government's message to people who look like Mr. Dana is … 'be very afraid!'" Faruqui exclaimed. "I'm afraid right now."
The judge gave prosecutors until 5 p.m. Thursday to file a document explaining how they would prevent the same mistake from happening in the future. Grand juries have declined to provide indictments in at least nine cases brought by Pirro's office since Trump ordered a federal takeover of policing in Washington, D.C.